HLA Compliance Certification:
Lessons learned from the US past activity
and current developments within NATO and PfP nations
Mr. Mark CROOKS
HLA Testing Manager
ALION/ DMSO Support
1901 N. Beauregard St.
Suite 400
Alexandria, VA 22311, USA
mcrooks@msiac.dmso.mil
Jean-Louis IGARZA
DGA/STTC/ DT/ SC
8, Boulevard Victor
00303 Armées, Paris, FRANCE
Jean-Louis.Igarza@ dga.defense.gouv.fr
Staffan LÖF
PITCH
Kunskapsutveckling AB
Nygatan
S-582 19 Linkoping, SWEDEN
staffan.lof@pitch.se
Chris TURRELL
HLA Program Manager
ALION/ DMSO Support
1901 N. Beauregard St.
Suite 400
Alexandria, VA 22311, USA
cturrell@msiac.dmso.mil
Philomena ZIMMERMAN
RDECOM, Army Materiel Command
AMSSB-SS-M
5001 Eisenhower Ave.
22333 Alexandria, VA, USA
philomena.zimmerman@us.army.mil
Keywords:
HLA, HLA Compliance Certification, NATO
ABSTRACT: The US DoD adopted the HLA standard as its preferred interoperability standard for M&S in 1995.
NATO adopted this architecture in 1998. HLA became an IEEE standard in 2000 (IEEE 1516) and recently a NATO
Standard (STANAG 4603). The HLA has now considerably matured. It is widely accepted and used by the
international community. The open international IEEE 1516 HLA standard is progressively replacing the US DoD 1.3
HLA standard according to the recommendations of the NATO M&S Group (NMSG) in April 2003 and the SISO in
December 2003.
In 2001, the NMSG created a first working group in charge of examining how a HLA compliance certification
capability could be established within NATO, the NATO member nations and the Partner for Peace (PfP) nations.
This NATO technical activity was directed to extend the current US certification capability to NATO and PfP nations.
This first NATO technical team was composed of members from 5 nations (France, Germany, Poland, UK and US).
Its final report was published by mid-2002. A SISO paper presenting recommendations and findings of this task group
was then published and introduced during the Euro SIW 2003, in Stockholm (Sweden). This new paper will
complement and update the former 2003 SISO paper.
Since the achievement of the first NATO working group three new nations have joined the NATO technical
activity: Canada, Spain and Sweden to form a new working group. The 8 nations are now working together for
implementing a NATO HLA compliance certification capability distributed within NATO and PfP nations. This should
be achieved in three voluntary nations as early as 2004.
This paper will first provide a short update of the current compliance certification process (as it is not well
known in Europe). Secondly, it will report on lessons learned based on the US testing since the first compliance test in
1997 and introduce never-published statistics on certified federates providing important information on the way the
HLA is used in the international community. Third, the current and planned activities of the recently created NATO
MSG-025 group will be described.
1. The HLA and the NATO Modeling and
Simulation (M&S) Organization
In June 2003, the NATO “HLA Compliance
Certification” team authored a first paper which was
introduced in the Euro-SIW in Sweden (reference [1]).
This paper was giving details about the history of the
NATO activity and its background. The present paper
does not plan to repeat former writing but provide a
minimal level of information to keep the current paper
self-explaining. A few repetitions should provide the
reader with a better understanding of the purpose and
the background of this second paper and the related
current NATO activity
The 03E-SIW-050 paper introduced how the HLA
emerged in the US in 1996, and its further recognition
by the highest NATO authority (the North-Atlantic
Council or NAC) as the key interoperability standard
for M&S in 1998. Since the introduction of the 03ESIW-050 paper during the Sweden Euro SIW some
important events -related to the HLA- need to be
mentioned since they clearly impact the NATO M&S
community and the establishment of a NATO
Compliance certification activity:
ƒ The recognition and increasing use of the IEEE
1516 version of the HLA (references [7] to [10]),
ƒ The publication of the new HLA FEDEP version
(reference [10]) mentioning explicitly the HLA
Compliance Certification process,
ƒ The acceptance of the NATO HLA Standard
agreement (STANAG 4603) in December 2003
recommending that HLA Compliance Certification
be applied to federates participating in NATO
HLA federations.
It is assumed that readers of this paper are already
familiar with the main concepts and features of the
HLA. People looking for more specific information on
HLA can refer to references [4] to [10].
1.1 The NATO M&S Organization
This organization was described in details in the former
paper. It is only useful to remind readers that, in
NATO, M&S is the first responsibility of the Research
and Technology (R&T) Organization (RTO) and
particularly of its subordinate NATO M&S Group
(well-known as the NMSG). Responsibilities of the
NMSG were extended in 2003 to include the
establishment of M&S interoperability standards. In
August 2003 the NMSG was officially recognized by
its NATO parent organization (the Conference of
National Director of Armament or CNAD) as a
delegated “Tasking Authority” for NATO.
North Atlantic Council (NAC)
Conference of National
Armament Directors
(CNAD)
Research and
Technology
Organisation
(RTO)
R&T Board
(RTB)
NATO M&S Group
NMSG
Military Committee
(MC)
R&T Agency
(RTA)
M&S Co-ordination Office
(MSCO)
Figure 1: The NATO M&S Organization
1.2 The HLA compliance certification technical
activity within NATO
The origin of this NATO activity comes directly from
Objective 1 of the NATO M&S Master Plan
(“Establish a common M&S architecture”) and, more
specifically, from Sub-Objective 1.1, which recommends the adoption of the HLA as the interoperability
standard for NATO.
At the beginning of the NMSG activity (1999), the US
proposed to support NATO with federate compliance
testing as a voluntary national contribution, while
waiting for NATO and/or some non-US member
nations to establish their own capability. In response to
this, the NMSG started to investigate how best to
implement a similar capability within NATO and the
member nations.
1.3 The first technical activity on HLA compliance
certification within NATO (2001-2002)
Nations directly supporting this first technical activity
were France, Germany, Poland, UK and US. They
issued a final report in 2002 [reference 12]. The main
objective assigned to this task group was to “Do a
investment/appraisal benefit analysis for establishing a
NATO capability in assuming that the US capability
becomes unavailable”. The Task Group globally
addressed this objective, and its final recommendations
were briefed to SISO and reported in the 03E-SIW-050
paper. Final conclusions are stated below:
In 2002, these final conclusions of the first Task Group
were presented to the NMSG. They were all accepted
and new nations expressed an interest in participating
in the follow on NATO activity.
“HLA compliance testing provides a first level of
assurance to the federation manager that a federate
conducts it as it says. Even if HLA certification does
not provide a full guarantee of interoperability, it
provides the first and necessary step in establishing the
future NATO interoperability infrastructure.”
1.4 The current technical activity on HLA
compliance certification within NATO (2003-2006)
This new technical activity was approved in March
2003 and started immediately after the approval. It is
officially named “Implementation of HLA Compliance
Certification within NATO and NATO/PfP Nations”
and designated as the NMSG technical activity MSG025.
No mandatory directive was ever issued by NATO
requesting that HLA federates which form part of a
NATO federation should be “HLA compliant”
certified. Nevertheless, the 2001-2002 task group had
the strong opinion that the establishment of a NATO
HLA compliance certification capability was to be
provided as a general and useful technical service to
participating organizations in establishing HLA
federations.
Nations agreed that the best solution was to share the
NATO HLA certification capability between NATO
member nations and PfP nations. The solution is
described in some detail in reference [12]. Every nation
supporting the establishment of the NATO HLA
certification capability would be granted access to this
service in the context of meeting national requirements.
NATO agreed to delegate the HLA certification of
national federates to those respective nations
responsible for federate development.
Nations participating in the task group recognized the
leadership of the US on this activity and agreed on the
requirement of using a unique process and a common
testing suite based on the current US process and
software.
The task group also addressed the specific constraints,
conditions and requirements for the evolution of the
HLA certification process and supporting software.
From 1997 to 2003 the US was the only nation dealing
with the HLA certification process. When non-US
nations join the process, it is agreed that future
evolutions of the test suite should be decided on a
consensus basis to ensure that a common process and
testing suite are maintained by participating nations.
The task group proposed that a users/testers club (or
working group) be established.
The nations further recommended that this supporting
organization should be established within the NMSG as
a new technical activity.
With three new member nations, 8 nations are currently
supporting this activity: Canada, France, Germany,
Poland, Spain, Sweden, UK and US. First
achievements and future projects of the new MSG-025
task group are introduced in section 4.
2. The current US HLA compliance
certification process
Compliance with the High Level Architecture (HLA)
was mandated for U.S. Department of Defense (DoD)
simulations in 1996. The US Defense Modeling and
Simulation Office (DMSO) established a federate
compliance test process to evaluate simulations and
certify them as HLA compliant to HLA Rules,
Interface Specification and the Object Model Template
(OMT). Testing began in October 1997 and as of
February 2004 over 257 federates have undergone
HLA compliance testing
The current certification process is described below. It
is quite simple: to be certified as HLA compliant, a
federate must demonstrate its adherence to the three
specification documents defining the HLA: the Rules,
the Interface Specification (IF), and the Object Model
Template Specification (references [4] to [6]). The
current process has four steps outlined below.
The compliance test suite is operated over the public
Internet except when security reasons prevent the use
of a public network.
2.1 Step 1: Completing a test application
This is achieved via the DMSO test web page.
Information needed to complete the application
includes:
• Point of Contact Information,
• Sponsorship Information,
• Federate Name, Version, and Brief
Description,
• HLA Specification Version,
•
•
RTI Version (verified using the DMSO
RTI verification process),
Expected Interface Test Date.
2.2 Step 2: Submission of a Conformance notebook
The federate developer submits a conformance
notebook via the web site for the Federate Under Test
(FUT). The conformance notebook consists of the
following, i.e. a Simulation Object Model (SOM), a
Conformance Statement (CS), and optionally, a
Scenario File. The Certification Agent conducts three
tests on the SOM and CS. These are the CS
Dependency Check, the SOM Parseability Test, and the
SOM/CS Cross-Check. The Certification Agent will
notify the FUT having either passed the three tests or
showing problems.
Once the Federate Under Test successfully passes Step
2, it is notified to proceed to Step 3.
2.3 Step 3: Submission of interface (IF) environmental data.
In preparation for the IF test the following information
is requested, i.e.
•
FOM (.fed file),
•
RTI Configuration File (RTI.rid file,
specific to the 1.3 HLA version and RTI
NG),
API, Hardware, and Operating System
used,
RTI Execution hostname and Internet (IP)
address,
Federation Execution hostname and IP
address,
Whether or not a firewall is in place,
Additional Comment Section.
•
•
•
•
•
2.4 Step 4: Interface Specification Testing &
Reporting.
The interface (IF) Test requires the Federate Under
Test to demonstrate every service and SOM capability
in the predetermined test sequence, which is designed
to represent a subset of the complete capability of the
FUT.
The IF Test has two parts:
• The Nominal Test, which ensures that the FUT can
invoke and respond to all services for which it is
capable, according to its CS and
• The Representative SOM (RepSOM) test, which
ensures that the FUT is capable of invoking and
responding to services using a range of data
contained in its SOM.
The Federate Certification Agent will log service data
from the test, analyze the data, generate results, and
return a Certification Summary Report (CSR) to the
federate developer. The CSR is the official record of
HLA compliance for the specific version of the
federate code tested.
The final part of Step 4 is the After Action Review
(AAR) and paperwork to document the federate’s
certification of compliance with the HLA. The
submission of the SOM to the HLA Object Model
Resource Center (OMRC) is also required before
receipt of the Certificate of HLA Compliance.
Results derived from After Action Reviews of federates
are a valuable source of information for the overall
HLA community and particularly for people involved in
the evolution of the HLA standard. Section 3 of this
paper provides statistics and main results based on the
US certification activity during its previous period
(from 1997 to 2003). They are presented in the section
3 of the current paper.
2.5 Current and recent improvements of the HLA
Compliance Certification software
Since its early beginning the current software was
based on the US DoD version of the HLA standard
(currently the 1.3 version). It is under going testing for
an upgraded to support the IEEE 1516 version of the
standard. It will nevertheless support both 1.3 and 1516
versions of HLA. This version is expected to be
released by the summer of 2004.
Due to the former generalized use of DMSO-provided
RTIs the certification process was mainly based on the
DMSO RTI NG successive versions. The new
certification software will support the use of different
RTI versions (either commercial or governmentally
developed) allowing federates to run under their usual
environment during the testing.
2.6 Rationale for establishing a certification
capability within NATO
In reference [12] reasons for establishing a NATO/PfP
HLA Compliance Certification Capability are
extensively developed. Readers can review the former
SISO paper for additional details (reference [1]).
The following paragraphs summarize the main
arguments as they were developed and agreed by the
NATO working group members.
2.6.1 Interoperability aspects
Technical interoperability is the capability of federates
to physically connect and exchange data in accordance
with the HLA standard. The achievement of technical
interoperability is a clear prerequisite for substantive,
or meaningful interoperability. HLA federate
compliance testing deals only with technical
interoperability. For assessing the capability of a
federate in a specific federation, federate “certification”
is recognized as one of the best, unbiased methods of
inspection.
This process does not totally satisfy all the
interoperability concerns of a federation manager, but
do provide a level of assurance that:
• The federate produces and consumes what it
claims it can,
• The federate manages itself in a manner consistent
with what it claims,
• The federate can call and receive call-backs from a
verified RTI as it states it can.
The current NATO MSG-025 task group plans to
address the substantive interoperability issue in the
future, but recognizes that maintaining rather then
improving the current capability of verifying the
technical interoperability is its first priority.
2.6.2 The HLA Compliance Certification activity as
a technical help
The HLA Compliance Certification is mandatory in the
US (see references [2] and [3]). In NATO and
NATO/PfP nations depending upon various national
policies, awareness and availability of the HLA
compliance testing process is considered as a technical
help to facilitate the integration of federates in a
federation, saving time and money, in addition to
encouraging reuse of federated applications.
2.6.3 HLA Compliance certification in support of
federate reuse
With the interoperability of simulations the second
main objectives of the NATO MSMP is their reuse. In
this context the HLA testing process forces the
development of SOMs in the HLA paradigm and
provides the best way to record SOMs in a repository,
which subsequently facilitates the reuse of federates.
The availability of SOMs and other Certification
artifacts (such as verified Conformance Statements)
provides some guarantee on the claimed capability of
federate applications, even if it is not a full insurance of
their interoperability. This is particularly important for
a large organization such as NATO where federates
can provide from different countries with very different
cultures, different level of commitments to HLA and
possibly diverse interpretations of the standard.
2.6.4 General assessment of HLA Compliance
Certification by NATO
First it was considered as very important to have a
formal method to verify that developers of modeling
and simulation applications (e.g. HLA federate
developers), understand
associated standard.
the
HLA
concept
and
Secondly, according to the different processes of main
standardization organizations, every standard should
provide the means to verify compliance to the standard.
In this context the HLA compliance testing process
should be considered as an integral part of the High
Level Architecture. This opinion is expressed in the text
of the HLA STANAG and the compliance certification
is recommended for national federates.
Nevertheless the common feeling is that certification
should not be considered as a mandatory requirement
for every developed simulation application. Rather the
HLA certification process is generally considered by
NATO/PfP nations as a generic service offered to HLA
federate developers to facilitate their integration in
future federations and an help to improve skills in the
HLA domain. This flexibility should not prevent any
future NATO program manager to require the HLA
certification process to be applied prior to federates
being integrated within a NATO federation.
3. Lessons learned from the past US
activity
The following information is extracted from the AAR
results of the federates certified by the US since 1997.
Those results were presented and commented within
the NATO MSG-025 task group but not yet introduced
in the SISO community. In June 2003 the unique
statistics on the time required by federates to be “HLA
compliant” certified was first introduced. Following
results are related to the use or the support of RTI
Services by HLA-certified federates.
3.1 Federation management
Table 1 Federation management services statistics
The table shows that 100% of the certified federates are
using or calling the 4 first services, which it is not
surprising since any federate shall be able to create,
destroy, join, and resign a federation. About 20% are
able to use or support Synchronization Points services.
The other services are in direct support of Save and
Restore activities: less that 3% of the federates use
them!
3.2 Declaration management
Services related to the update/reflect attribute values,
discover/register object instances or receive/send
interactions are used/served by about 80% of federates.
This observation is consistent with former remarks on
services commented in the beginning of section 3.2.
More specific services, but still related to attribute
updates, are used/served by about 40% of federates (or
slightly less): these rates are considered as normal. 5
even more sophisticated services are used by less than
4%. Those results do not raise any special issue.
3.4 Ownership management
Table 2 Declaration management services statistics
Around 80% of federates are concerned with
Publication and Subscription activities (for both Object
and Interaction classes). The main question is “what
level of capabilities the remaining 20% offer?”
More dynamical activities (runtime) such as
Unsubscribe or Unpublish are supported by less than
15% of federates. Other dynamic services like Turn
On/Off Interaction or Registration for Object Start/Stop
are supported by around 30% of federates. These
observations are less surprising.
Table 4 Ownership management services statistics
Less than 8% of federates are using these services. This
low number shows that few federations take profit
from this mechanism that is clearly one of the great
benefits of the HLA standard. It could be hoped that
more developers realize the interest of this method to
implement e.g. some multi-level modeling capability in
a federation.
3.5 Time management
3.3 Object management
Table 5 Time management services statistics
Table 3 Object management services statistics
About 25% from certified federates are using these
services. One of the great advantages of HLA
compared to the previous DIS standard is the
possibility of mixing different types of Time
Management. It does not seem that federation
developers/managers were able to take advantage of
that. Another interpretation could be that many
federations are “real-time” and cannot (or don’t want)
to use non real-time, time-constrained federates. This
hypothesis is reinforced by the large use of the RPRFOM (Real Platform Reference FOM) used as the
basic reference in many training federations.
Nevertheless after the observation of the weak level of
use of Ownership Management services these results
reinforce the feelings of surprise and disappointment
realizing the real capability of the M&S community to
exploit the best technology.
3.6 Data Distribution management
Table 7 Support services statistics
These services are rather specific. The observed rates
of about 20% for the “Enable” confirms they are
useful. Other services are used by less than 5% of the
federates. Taking into account the specificity of this
type of services the above statistics do not raise any
issue.
3.8 Intermediate Conclusion
The observed results demonstrate that there is a gap
between the possibilities provided by the HLA and
their real use. It shall be underlined that these statistics
are relative to more than 5 years of use: they show that
technology improvements are not so quick to
implement in real applications!
Table 6 Data Distribution Management services
statistics
The more frequently use services are used by federates
in about 5% of cases. This is not surprising: few
federations are really requiring this capability. In
addition DDM in the 1.3 version of the specification is
difficult to implement, and it is not obvious that it was
really cost-beneficial to implement it in specific cases.
DDM implementation in the IEEE 1516 version of the
specification was greatly simplified. It will be
interesting to see if more federate developers adopt this
servise in the international version of the specification.
3.7 Support Services
4. The new HLA Compliance Certification
technical activity within NATO
The new NATO Task Group (MSG-025) has met three
times in 2003. First it established its 3-year program of
work that was approved by the NMSG in October
2003. In addition to the current US capability three
other nations are about to implement a national HLA
compliance certification capability in 2004: Canada,
France and Sweden.
The first delivery of the new task group is an
“Implementation Plan” available since the first quarter
of 2004. This document should be of a great support
for the establishment of the 3 projected new
capabilities. It will be updated as required according to
the lessons learned from the first developments of the
non-US capabilities and the increasing experience of
the current US capability. A tutorial on the use of the
certification process and corresponding software will
soon be organized thanks to the US support in one of
the participating nations to facilitate the other new
implementations.
As it was proposed in 2002 by the former NATO Task
Group, MSG-025 Task Group will serve as a “user
club” to share certification experiences, to discuss
possible improvements of the existing process and its
supporting software. This “HLA Certification Advisory
Group” will meet first in September 2004 in Canada.
5. Conclusions
The HLA is a living standard. Past Euro-SIWs proved
that it has been largely accepted outside the US and
outside the defense domain. The public IEEE 1516
version is being more widely adopted every day. Its
application is now officially recommended by some
European MoDs like France and Sweden, and at the
upper level by the NATO M&S Group. The US DoD is
developing its transition strategy to the public standard.
The SISO is working on the revision of the IEEE 1516.
All these recent events prove the vitality of HLA, 8
years after its first announcement.
Nevertheless the examination of the statistical results
derived from the past US activity of HLA compliance
certification from 1997 to 2003 suggests that the M&S
community has not exploited the full potential of the
standard yet.
For example:
ƒ The “Save and Restore” capability does not
seem largely implemented,
ƒ The potential of Ownership management and
Time management is rarely exploited (which
is surprising enough)!
These observations should not be commented without
expressing some caveat:
• Current statistics are mainly established on the
capability of legacy simulations which have
inherently some functional limitations,
• Maybe some of the certified federates were
not really interested in an extensive HLA
functionality, but it was rather felt that they
had to implement some HLA capability to
comply with a mandatory policy. In this case
developers would be tempted to use only a
minimal set of services to be declared
conformant to the standard,
• Another interpretation could be that in the
absence of formal requirements to be included
in a specific federation, only a very limited
number of services were supported,
• The extension of HLA Compliance
Certification to new nations will produce a
better understanding of the possibilities the
standard offers. The increasing use of HLA
and the transition to the IEEE 1516 will
certainly modify the general trend which was
previously observed.
Nevertheless
it
is
recommended
that
developers/revisers of the new version of IEEE 1516
Standard carefully examine services which are not
commonly used to examine if they are either “of little
utility”, poorly designed, misunderstood, not adapted to
common requirements or more simply too costly or too
difficult to implement.
No mandatory directive was ever issued by NATO
requesting that HLA federates which form part of a
NATO federation should be “HLA compliant”
certified. However, HLA compliance was clearly
mentioned as an important prerequisite to
interoperability in the NATO M&S Master Plan and
the NMSG has directed the MSG-025 to establish it.
On the hand, HLA is the only standard fully complying
with processes followed by main standardization
organizations specifying that every standard should
provide the way to certify compliance.
The wishes of NATO and of NATO/PfP nations are
• that the HLA Compliance Certification
capability evolve in consistency with the
standard, which is continuously improving,
• that certification be considered as a useful and
normal process in the development of HLA
supported applications.
Nations participating in the NATO MSG-025 task
group recognize the leadership of the US on this
activity and agreed on the requirement of establishing a
unique testing suite based on the current US software.
They also plan to contribute to the improvement of this
capability in accordance with the evolution of the
standard. By end-2004 three new nations (Canada,
France and Sweden) will have joined the US in
proposing a compliance certification service to their
own benefits and to the benefits of their partners from
NATO and PfP nations.
Special thanks:
The co-authors want to thank the US DMSO for its
continuous support. They are also grateful to their
MSG-025 colleagues for their comments and precious
advices: David Robert (Bob) ELLIOTT (Canada), Lui
KAM (France), Hans-Peter MENZLER (Germany),
Andrezj NAJGEBAUER (Poland), Patricio JIMENEZ
(Spain) and Gunnar ÖHLUND (Sweden).
References
[1] Simulation Interoperability Workshop, paper
#03E-SIW-050: “HLA Compliance Certification:
future developments within NATO and NATO
nations” by Jean-Louis IGARZA, Pascal
CANTOT,
Mark
CROOKS,
Hans-Peter
MENZLER, Andrzej NAJGEBAUER, Neil
SMITH
[2] Paul Kaminski, “DoD High Level Architecture
(HLA) for Simulations,” USD(A&T) Memorandum, 10 September 1996
[3] Jacques Gansler, “DoD Transition to the High
Level Architecture (HLA) for Simulations,”
USD(A&T) Memorandum, 1 April 1998
[4] US Department of Defense, “High Level
Architecture Rules Version 1.3,” 20 April 1998
[5] US Department of Defense, “High Level
Architecture Interface Specification Version 1.3,”
20 April 1998
[6] US Department of Defense, “High Level Architecture Object Model Template Specification
Version 1.3,” 20 April 1998
[7] IEEE 1516-2000 : “IEEE Standard for Modeling
and Simulation (M&S) High Level Architecture
(HLA) - Framework and Rules”
[8] IEEE 1516.1-2000 : “IEEE Standard for Modeling
and Simulation (M&S) High Level Architecture
(HLA) - Federate Interface Specification”
[9] IEEE1516.2-2000 : “IEEE Standard for Modeling
and Simulation (M&S) High Level Architecture
(HLA) - Object Model Template (OMT) Specification”
[10] IEEE 1516.3TM-2003 : “IEEE Recommended
Practice for High Level Architecture (HLA) –
Federation Development and Execution Process
(FEDEP)”, 23 April 2003,
[11] Simulation Interoperability Workshop, paper
#00F -SIW-036, “Improvements to the HLA Federate Compliance Testing Process”, by Margaret M.
Horst, David Rosenbaum, Kyle A. Crawford,
Georgia Tech Research Institute, September 2000
[12] NATO RTO Technical Report 50, “NATO HLA
Certification”, work performed by the RTO NATO
Modelling and Simulation Group “Task-Group
008”, June 2002
Author Biographies
JEAN-LOUIS IGARZA is responsible for the M&S
Interoperability and Standardization effort of the
French MoD. He holds his position within the “Service
for Technical Strategies and Common Technologies”
(STTC) of the General Delegation for Armament
(DGA) since the 1st of October 2003. He was formerly
appointed as the Chief Scientist of the NATO
Modeling and Simulation Co-ordination Office
(MSCO) from October 2000 to end-September 2003.
Before this period he was head of the Simulation
Department of the “Centre d’Analyse de Défense”
(CAD, Center for Defense Analysis of the French
MoD. He has a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics
(University of Paris, 1969). He is teaching “M&S” at
the University of Versailles.
Mark CROOKS is the Alion HLA Testing Manager
in support of DMSOs HLA program since March 1999.
He served as a simulation analyst for both RAND and
CSC. Prior to retiring from the U.S. Army he served as
the Chief of the Simulation Division Fort Stewart, GA
and has served in positions from Platoon leader to
Corps Staffs. He has a Masters from Troy State and his
undergraduate degree from The Citadel. He was also a
voting member of the IEEE standards body at the time
of the adoption of HLA by the IEEE.
STAFFAN LÖF is president and CEO of Pitch
Kunskapsutveckling AB. He holds a MSc in Computer
Science from Uppsala University. He has extensive
experience from running high-tech companies and
managing R&D programs and projects. During 199596 he was Attaché of Science and Technology at the
Swedish Office of Science and Technology in San
Francisco.
CHRIS TURRELL is a Senior Simulation Analyst
with Alion Science and Technology, Inc. of
Alexandria, VA where he is the technical lead for the
Defense Modeling and Simulation Office, High Level
Architecture program.
His background includes
service as an Army Officer, fielding and site operations
management for the DARPA Simulation Networking
(SIMNET) Program, support of numerous DARPA
Technical Demonstrations, and Operations Officer of
the Institute for Defense Analyses, Simulation Center.
He is actively involved in Defense Modeling and
Simulation Office’s High Level Architecture and
Composable Mission Space Environments programs
and participates in related IEEE and SISO standards
development activities.
Phil ZIMMERMAN is ….